There’s this odd apple and hawthorn compote made locally. With sour milk it is — kissing fingertips — ah!

We have big banks of wildflowers, murmurings of bees, the settledness and comfy proportions of an old house, but here is none of the easy soothing sweetness, none of the southern perfume of Virginia. Tall shivering aspens, which E at three in Wisconsin forever named sparkly trees, make the forest, already full of sharp angles, seem full of trembling energy. If Albemarle County feels like soft lavender daubs, this is cubism. Bracing.